It is 30 years since the “exodus” from the Valley of its minority Hindu Kashmiri Pandit community. The hotly contested circumstances of their departure between January and March 1990, the numbers, and the issue of their return are an important side to the Kashmir story that has fed into the Hindu-Muslim polarisation in India over the years, in turn fuelling the Hindu-Muslim chasm in the Valley. The exodus took place at the same time that the BJP was upping the ante across northern India, and over the years, the plight of Kashmiri Pandits has become a potent Hindutva issue.
The run-up: 1980s to 1990
In the lead-up to the events of 1990, Kashmir was in ferment. Sheikh Abdullah had died in 1982, and the leadership of the National Conference passed on to his son Farooq Abdullah, who won the 1983 election. But within two years, the Centre broke up the NC, and installed dissident Ghulam Mohammed Shah as Chief Minister. This led to huge disaffection and political instability. The Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) stepped up its activities, and the hanging of the militant leader Maqbool Bhat in 1984 added to the sense of foreboding. In 1986, after the Rajiv Gandhi government opened the Babri Masjid locks to enable Hindus to offer prayers there, ripples were felt in Kashmir too.
In Anantnag, the constituency of then Congress leader Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, there was a series of attacks on Hindu temples, and shops and properties of Kashmiri Pandits, blamed on separatist and secessionists. In 1986, as opposition to the Shah government grew, Rajiv Gandhi resurrected Farooq Abdullah, who became CM once again. The rigged election of 1987 after which Abdullah formed the government was a turning point at which militants took the upper hand. The 1989 capitulation to the JKLF in the kidnapping of Mufti Sayeed’s daughter set the stage for the next decade.
By then, the Pandits had begun to be targeted. The Valley’s BJP leader Tika Lal Taploo was shot dead on September 13. Neel Kanth Ganjoo, a retired judge who had sentenced Maqbool Bhat to death, was shot dead outside the J&K High Court in Srinagar on November 4. Journalist-lawyer Prem Nath Bhat was shot dead in Anantnag on December 27. Hit lists of Pandits were in circulation. Waves of panic hit the community, especially after a local newspaper published an anonymous message, allegedly from the Hizb-ul Mujahideen, asking Pandits to leave.
Matters came to a head on January 19. By then, the Farooq Abdullah government had been dismissed and Governor’s Rule imposed. According to accounts published by many eminent Kashmiri Pandits, there were threatening slogans over loudspeakers from mosques, and on the streets. Speeches were made extolling Pakistan and the supremacy of Islam, and against Hinduism.
The Kashmiri Pandit community decided to leave. On January 20, the first stream began leaving the Valley with hastily packed belongings in whatever transport they could find. A second, larger wave left in March and April, after more Pandits were killed.
On January 21, the CRPF gunned down 160 Kashmiri Muslim protesters at the Gawkadal Bridge, which has come to be known as the worst massacre in the long history of the conflict in Kashmir. The two events — the flight of the Pandits and the Gawkadal massacre — took place within 48 hours, but for years, neither community could accept the pain of the other, and in some ways, still cannot, as each continues to talk past the other.
According to some estimates, notably by the Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti (KPSS), of 75,343 Kashmiri Pandit families in January 1990, more than 70,000 fled between 1990 and 1992. The flight continued until 2000. The KPSS has placed the number of Kashmiri Pandits killed by militants from 1990 to 2011 at 399, the majority during 1989-90. Some 800 families have remained in the Valley through these three decades.
Eduindex News 